Nigel Farage thinks Marine Le Pen becoming French president would be a 'questionable thing'

It would be a "questionable thing" should far-right politician Marine Le Pen become French president next year, Nigel Farage has said.

The interim Ukip leader said "elements" of her National Front party had always given him "great difficulty", despite Le Pen saying the effort to distance the parties was "ridiculous".

The surge in support for populist parties and outsider candidates has made 2016 "the year of political revolution", Farage said.

Nigel Farage beams as he arrives at Trump Tower (Evan Vucci/AP)

"First Brexit, now the Trump victory, and who knows what might happen next year across the rest of Europe," he told ITV's Good Morning Britain.

Le Pen hopes the same anti-establishment political wave will help her to victory in 2017´s French presidential race, but Farage said: "That would be a questionable thing.

"There are elements of her party that I have great difficulty with and I always have had.

"I have never said a bad word about her, but I have never said a good word about her party."

The National Front has faced charges of racism and bigotry throughout its existence, with Le Pen's father and founder, Jean-Marie, widely criticised for dismissing the Holocaust as "a detail" of history.

Yet, speaking on the BBC's The Andrew Marr Show, Le Pen said: "Maybe Ukip is trying to counter the demonisation they are victim of by saying 'we are the good guys and the National Front are the bad guys'.

"They can do so, but I don't feel obliged to follow this strategy, because, frankly, I feel it's a little bit ridiculous.

"On the topic of immigration and the European Union, there is not a hair's breadth of difference between what Ukip thinks and what the National Front thinks, let's be truthful here."